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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I'm so fucking heartbroken. I'm donating to the ACLU to convince myself that I'm not powerless
.
You're not powerless by any means. The protest has already resulted in a small number of people being freed—and the protestors aren't going anywhere.
Also, if you're on Twitter, tweet a screenshot of your donation receipt to Celeste Ng
and she'll match it dollar for dollar. It doubles the impact of your action.
Well, yeah. In order to have a healthy democracy you can't just have the perpetual rule of one party and that goes both ways. It means you need a respectable opposition. If your preferred candidate doesn't win, the person who gets in should ideally be someone you can have at least some modicum of respect for and won't run the country into the ground. They should, at worst, just be respectable but mediocre, not someone you loathe with every fiber of your being.
The Republican party is not that opposition right now, and until the base that votes for them grows sufficiently weak and the republicans become proper conservatives (no authoritarianism, no xenophobia, no racism dogwhistle or otherwise, no randian bullshit, etc) it will not be that opposition, and so they cannot be trusted with power.
edited 28th Jan '17 5:24:49 PM by Draghinazzo
There's another problem: Where are all the Ex-Republicans going to go if the Republican Party is outlawed? Sure, some of the more violent or problematic Republicans will end up in jail, but a majority of the Non-Violent but Politically inept ex-Republicans are still going to be free and independent people, and they still make up 20%-30% of the Population. Some might just give up on Politics, but there's no way they all will. They'll just move on to another Party (perhaps even the Democrat Party), corrupt it, and nothing is changed.
Again, this would be the party that brings in the Ex-Republicans, and the Ex-Republicans are Politically inept, will still rely on Fox News (or worse) to get their info, and that party will become as Corrupted as the Republican Party currently is.
Still, sounds like something Evan Mc Mullin could start.
edited 28th Jan '17 5:31:32 PM by DingoWalley1
Just caught up. I was thinking about this stuff all day long at work, because, you know, it's work and I can avoid mistakes most of the time really well anyway. So my thoughts, and this might a long one:
What we need is a new party. A real Conservative party that deals in practical facts rather than stupid bullshit moralizing. Compose it of engineers and lawmakers working together on the ground level stuff. Infrastructure. Bonus points if these people worked for the Peace Corp for a time, since they'd have experience in all kinds of conditions, and would be somewhat less likely to be hardcore racists. If they're real conservatives and not Alt-righters, they might actually be able to work with the Democrats from time to time too. As for how to campaign . . .
They'd need to drive a wedge between the Alt-Righters and regular Conservatives. They should refer to the voters as Conservatives (direct enough to show who they're appealing to, vague enough to encapsulate all conservative types but the Alt.) while referring to the politicians who failed them as the GOP. Never as the Grand Old Party. Racism and Sexism did horrible enough things without adding the potential for Grand and Old to become slurred and adding Ageism to the list of isms plaguing us. Plus calling them by their acronym allows enemies to create their own slurs of the name without guiding them. I'm partial to Governmental Opposition Party, since it's not really an insult, and it IS truly what they are.
They should focus on infrastructure and poke at Trump for wasting $20 billion on a wall that could have gone to rebuilding roads and power lines that we already knew needed fixed back during Bush's reign. Bonus points for reminding people that even Obama never got around to fixing them, which would separate the American Infrastructure Party, or National Rebuilding Party, from the Dems sufficiently enough to attract less staunch GOP supporters.
To top it all off, they could use "Rebuilding America, Together" as their campaign slogan. What do y'all think?
I was rematch ingredients Wreck It Ralph last night and I noticed the main villain reminds me of Trump. Mostly.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."The problem I see with that idea is that, really, what is a good conservative party?
Right now, the poster child for moderate, benevolent conservatism is probably Angela Merkel, and even she occasionally has to pull shit like burqa bans to pull voters in. What is a 'positive' conservative ideology, and how do you sell it to a party whose appeal since the 60's has largely been framed around opposing civil rights and economically unsafe tax measures?
edited 28th Jan '17 5:35:16 PM by math792d
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.Right now, Evan McMullin probably embodies the idea of a "Good Conservative" in my mind. As vehemently as I may disagree with him on certain policy issues, he's undeniably a man of moral character who's spoken out loudly and tirelessly against the rising tide of fascism and bigotry in our nation.
Also, I know we don't fully trust these accounts, but worth knowing anyway—according to the Rogue POTUS staff, the GOP is all for Calexit.
Trump wants to openly give money to the movement, and Bannon wants to pretend to support it as a state's rights issue, with the secret motivation of imbalancing the Electoral College in their favor.
A good conservative party . . .
They focus on the maintenance stuff. Keeping our armed forces strong enough to keep others from messing with us (like tearing down our foreign interests) without bulking them out for taking over small countries. Or keeping our roads and power grid up to snuff for us. Using minimal funding to do it all (not so minimal that they can't do it right but not so much that you start thinking they're skimming.) and not really worrying about the social stuff. Their stance on the social stuff is "That is not my area of focus. You want me to back gay marriage or equal rights for a racial minority? Better be ready to back my budget proposal or donate to my local church's outreach program." Tit for tat trading policies and such to get stuff done.
ETA: A good conservative doesn't fight social change, he or she just doesn't rush it. "That's nice. Great idea. We have more pressing concerns right now. You want that? Either get the Dems to give us something in exchange or wait til they have the majority."
edited 28th Jan '17 5:41:45 PM by Journeyman
@R Bluefish: I don't think the @RoguePOTUS twitter account is a "real" rogue account. They used the #triggered hashtag, which is used by trolls.
edited 28th Jan '17 5:53:04 PM by higherbrainpattern
Hey...
A stay has been granted in the ACLU's lawsuit, which was filed against the Muslim ban.
Can somebody versed in legalese explain what effects exactly this has? Apparently it's good enough for Dale Ho, the ACLU's Voting Rights director,
to say "we won."
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I've started seeing it used to mock the alt-right (in the sense that all they do is projecting so people point out that they're acting the way they say someone who's "triggered" would act), so I'm not sure that's conclusive evidence.
I think it means that they're supposed to halt enacting the law until it can be reviewed and people can figure out how the fuck it's supposed to be enforced. Which, legally speaking, means those who are currently being held or sent back to other countries can finally either leave the airport or come back home. The question, of course, is what Trump's going to do next because I don't think he much respects the concept of judges saying a law is somehow unenforceable.
I actually don't doubt it if the Republican Party wants Calexit especially Trump.
In fact I could see why Trump would want to give money to the movement since California causes him to lose the popular vote and it ensures he wins the next election. The California Independence Movement also has backing from one of his puppetmasters.
And it'd hand the country to the Republicans for the next decade or two.
Well how about that. Some good news. See that, HBP? We're not out of this fight yet. Not by a long damn shot.
Now we need to defend this victory. The Orange House is going to fight to reinstate the ban, and they're going to fight dirty for sure.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."He has a frightening amount of power to change the system itself right now. The normal checks and balances aren't working like they should.
But still, we should all take a moment to enjoy this victory. We struck a blow, and it should stand to help a lot of people, even if it's temporary.
"We'll take the next chance, and the next, until we win, or the chances are spent."

Again, I feel reminded of some White Rose leaflets.
- unpublished White Rose leaflet (with names changed to fit 2017 USA instead of 1940s Germany)
edited 28th Jan '17 5:09:01 PM by Balmung